Athletes perform superbly at Butler Shield

On Saturday, a successful day at Harrow in the Butler Shield left Haileybury’s athletics team equalling our best overall result at one of the longest running competitions on the school circuit.

Individual performances of the day go to Biyi Alo (L) for his shot put, a distance that qualifies him for the National Championships and places him 9th in the UK so far this year, Eric Chu (Th) for a Triple Jump that currently ranks him 10th in the UK, Matthew Morrison (L) for equalling the school record in the 100m and George Hudson (Tr), for breaking the 2000m Steeplechase school record.

The willingness of our small team to compete in up to five events each in one day, combined with some really high level performances, meant that we were only bettered by the all-boys schools, finishing in 4th place behind Harrow, St Paul’s and Eton.

Last Thursday Haileybury’s athletics team also travelled to the Achilles Relays. Although the junior boys just missed out on qualification for the finals, the inter boys performed superbly in the heats, qualifying fastest in both the 4 by 100m and 4 by 200m and second fastest in the 4 by 400m. Unfortunately, there were mixed results in the finals. A missed change-over handed Harrow victory in the 4 by 100m when we were cruising, 4-5 metres up. However, a polished display by the 4 by 200m team of Tomi Fafowora, Okemdi Chukwu, Callum Scutt and Matthew Morrison meant a new school record on the way to beating Millfield to win the title – Haileybury’s first ever victory in this event at U17 level in 49 years! The final event of the day proved one race too far for our tiring squad and despite an awesome showing from Christian Scales on second leg, we could only manage 4th place in the 4 by 400m.